BTOP Information

The Utah Education Network has been awarded a grant by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) in the first round of the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Non-Discrimination Policies

BTOP Home

UEN’s mission as a K-20 educational and research network is consistent with the principles outlined in the FCC’s Broadband Policy Statement (FCC 05-151), and UEN commits to adhere to these principles under the terms set forth in the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Notice of Funds Availability (RIN 0660-ZA28) (BTOP NOFA), subject to the needs of law enforcement and reasonable network management practices. UEN will not favor any lawful Internet applications or content over others under the terms set forth in the BTOP NOFA, subject to the needs of law enforcement and reasonable network management practices, all as more specifically described in this paragraph. Specifically, UEN will not give preferential treatment of affiliated services, or charge some application and content providers for ―fast lanes--that would put others at a competitive disadvantage. UEN may, however, employ generally-accepted technical measures to provide acceptable service levels to all customers, such as caching and application-neutral bandwidth allocation, as well as measures to address spam, denial of service attacks, illegal content, and other harmful activities. UEN operates a vast statewide distance learning video network for education which does not operate within the public Internet space for privacy, performance, and security reasons. Events on UEN’s interactive video conferencing (IVC) network can traverse the commodity Internet; however, in general, events stay within UEN’s Wide-Area-Network and routes to Internet2. UEN employs technical and security measures on its network to address spam, denial of service attacks (DOS), computer viruses, malware, malicious code, and content filtering as required by state and federal law. UEN also cooperates with local, state, and federal law enforcement and with UEN’s customers to prevent and prosecute harmful and/or illegal activities.

CenturyLink/Qwest Non-Discrimination and Interconnection Policy

Utah Education Network (“UEN”)
NOFA1 BTOP Grant

Qwest Interconnection and Nondiscrimination Commitments

Qwest Interprets the interconnection condition as applying only to the overall facilities funded directly by the award to the Utah Education Network (“Funded Facilities”) and the non-discrimination obligation only to activities performed directly on the Funded Facilities. Thus, for Qwest’s purposes, the interconnection obligation only applies to the Qwest facilities funded directly by the award (the “Qwest Funded Facilities”) and the non-discrimination obligation only to activities performed directly on the Qwest Funded Facilities.

The Qwest Funded Facilities for QMOE service include the associated fiber distribution panels, applicable fiber facilities, and applicable conduit, for Qwest Corporation’s (QC) Metro Optical Ethernet (QMOE) and GeoMax transport (GeoMax) services. The actual Qwest Funded Facilities will vary by location.

Consistent with the above, the interconnection condition would not apply to other non-funded Qwest-owned facilities – for example, (1) any existing fiber used to provision either QMOE or GeoMax service from the central office to the customer premise, existing network work equipment and their associated fiber distribution panels, or conduit, or (2) Qwest-owned facilities on the public internet side (e.g. the BRAS or other aggregation facilities, Qwest core or edge routers, dedicated Internet access (DIA), Internet backbone and peering points. And, the non-discrimination condition would not apply to activities performed on those other facilities even if performed in connection with services provided over the Qwest Funded Facilities. UEN is responsible for complying with interconnection requirements for facilities or equipment it purchased from Qwest or are UEN provided (e.g. applicable pest duct, and Cisco 2560 equipment).

Notwithstanding any of the above:

1. FCC Principles. Qwest will adhere to the principles contained in the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement (FCC 05-151, adopted August 5, 2005).

2. Nondiscrimination QC’s QMOE service allows customers to choose a Quality of Service option and a Service Level Agreement (SLA). QC ‘s GeoMax services offers guaranteed SLA’s, such as service availability, customer notification, service delivery and mean time to repair. Qwest will not favor any Internet application or content over another on Qwest Funded Facilities subject to the needs of law enforcement and reasonable network management, such as:

   1. Giving priority to National Security / Emergency Response traffic
   2. Following a reasonable nondiscrimination standard by offering prioritized services (such as prioritizing VoIP traffic) to similarly-situated customers.
   3. Employing generally accepted technical measures, even if not neutral, to provide acceptable service levels to all customers.
   4. Offering prioritized services through private network/managed services.

   UEN is responsible for complying with nondiscrimination requirements over facilities or equipment it owns that is funded by stimulus dollars.

Qwest interprets all of these practices as being consistent with the non-discrimination obligation, the NOFA exception for reasonable network management, or the NOFA exception for private/managed services – or all of the above.

3. Disclosure of Network Management Plans. Qwest posts its network management practices for its QC QMOE and GeoMax service in its Qwest Corporation Technical Publications for Metro Optical Ethernet (Technical Publication PUB 77411) available online at http://www.qwest.com/techpub/77411/77411.pdf and GeoMax (Technical Publication PUB 77407) available online at http://www.qwest.com/techpub/77407/77407.pdf.

Technical Publications for Qwest’s other private line services are also posted on its website at http://www.qwest.com/techpub/ and are also referenced in its Qwest Corporation Rates and Service Schedule and Interstate tariff found on Qwest’s website at http://tariffs.qwest.com:8000/idc/groups/public/documents/rss/htmltoc_qc_rss1.htm and http://tariffs.qwest.com:8000/idc/groups/public/documents/tariff/htmltoc_fcc1.htm

4. Connection to the Internet. UEN gains access to the public Internet through dedicated internet access facilities that are not funded through this project.

5. Interconnection. Qwest interprets its interconnection obligation as only requiring offers of interconnection to the Qwest Funded Facilities where technically feasible without exceeding current or reasonably anticipated capacity limitations, on reasonable rates and terms to be negotiated with requesting parties. Qwest also interprets its obligation as being limited to interconnection for the purpose of exchanging public Internet traffic with UEN or using the Qwest Funded Facilities to access the public internet. Qwest understands that the interconnection condition does not require wholesale access such as unbundling. But, as an incumbent local exchange carrier, Qwest will provide access to unbundled network elements, resale, and collocation with respect to the Qwest Funded Facilities when required to do so under Section 251 of the Communications Act.

Consistent with the above, UEN’s network is a private network and UEN is responsible for complying with Interconnection obligations over its private network. Where spare capacity exists over the Qwest Funded Facilities, Qwest anticipates that the interconnection requirements as described above will be met by permitting customers to purchase other fiber based private line services such as QMOE and GeoMax from QC’s Rates and Services Schedule or QC’s interstate tariff. The actual services available may change over time. Pricing for these services is dependent on a combination of factors such as the desired bandwidth, circuit mileage, length of term and other miscellaneous order options. These services are offered to similarly situated customers under similar rates, terms, and conditions.